


Ser Uña y Carne

by calaverita



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mom Ana Amari, Omnic Crisis, Painkillers, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 04:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10779489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calaverita/pseuds/calaverita
Summary: ow





	Ser Uña y Carne

Shrapnel tore the air in half, narrowly missing Gabriel Reyes's shoulder as he vaulted over a cement pipe for cover. The pervasive sound of Omnic servos clinking loomed in the distance. After a brief moment of reconnaissance, he pulled out his dual shotguns and turned to fire them towards the approaching cluster of machines. He managed to get one headshot in, knocking down one of the six. The remaining five continued unfazed even as bullets lodged in their joints. With a squint, Gabe clocked them at about fifteen feet away. Ten feet. Five feet.

Two of the Omnics collapsed against each other as a bullet whirled through both metal heads. Gabe glanced up to the crumbling building on his right and spied a familiar figure through a window on one of the upper floors.

"I'll take care of them, now go find Morrison and the others," Ana hissed over comms.

"Right. Thanks, Mom," Gabe muttered back, which was met by a brief tongue click on the other end. He made sure he had a clear exit before grabbing his guns and dashing to the wall of the building. More of the enemy loitered around the corner as he shimmied along the cement, making sure his guns were tucked out of view before moving in for the kill. In front of him lay a partially collapsed building. He thanked the pallets loaded with wrapped crates for providing easy cover on the way over. 

Once behind the crate closest to the building's entrance, Gabe briefly peeked over and spotted a small hand sticking out of a pile of rubble in the atrium of the ruins. It was still moving and four Omnics had surrounded it. A muffled sob croaked from beneath the pile. He checked the chambers of both guns: two bullets in each. "Shit," he whispered. The machines continued to approach the pile, slow as if in a funeral procession. Gabe swallowed and turned the corner to open fire on the group. Three of them took shots to the head, the fourth one to their...chin?

All four collapsed onto the gravel, the lights on their faceplates fading. Gabe hopped over the bodies and dropped his guns to begin digging through the rubble. He grabbed the frantically-waving hand and pulled it out. The blood drained from his face. It was a human arm, too small to belong to an adult, haphazardly attached to a whirring motor that appeared to move the hand side to side. He had fallen into their trap. 

Gabe had to suppress the urge to vomit at the sight as cold hands closed around his neck from behind and tilted his head back. If he had to guess, the Omnic he shot in the chin had survived. Their unrelenting grip grew tighter as they dragged him away from the trap. He clung to the Omnic's arms and tried to wrench them away, which only egged the machine on further. Never before had he heard of an Omnic trying to choke someone. Shoot them, beat them, bomb them, sure. But this close-quarters combat? Nothing about it in the hundreds of dossiers he had read over the past year. Purple dots danced in his peripheral vision as he felt his trachea begin to succumb to the pressure. Everything went dark and the sound of explosions rang in his ears. 

Jack Morrison whacked an Omnic with the butt of his gun and threw them to the ground before stomping their face in. After a quick look around, he crouched down and began downloading its black box by connecting a drive to the port in their neck. While he waited for the data, he tuned into comms. "This is Morrison, checking in. Amari, what's your 20, over?"

"The construction site," she replied, "there's a few holed up in the cement pipes there."

"Copy that. Have you heard from Reyes, over?"

"Not since I told him I'd take care of the site and to keep looking for civilians. _Mumkin_ he's just trying to lay low."

"I'm gonna go looking for him. Not like him to go this long without cracking some dumbass joke."

"Last time I saw him he was heading east towards the civic center. Try to not get yourself killed," Ana sighed. "I'll head over to the LZ once I've cleared the area. Almost done here."

"Copy that, over and out.” Jack tuned out of comms and looked through his scouter to determine the fastest route to the civic center. Apparently it stood a ways behind him. He unplugged his drive from the Omnic and stored it his waist pouch, then slowly rose up to gauge his surroundings. Clear save for the distant gunfire--it was an automatic, too fast to be Gabe's shotguns. 

Jack wiped some sweat from his brow and dashed in a zig-zag pattern towards his destination. After careening around a few buildings and alleyways, he made it. His scouter warned him of Omnic activity at the entrance: oddly enough, it only accounted for one. Usually they roamed in packs, what was this one's deal? He crouch-ran behind a crate and checked the entrance again. Someone was on the floor. Gabriel. The Omnic had their hands on him. Jack jumped up and bolted towards the two, impulsively firing his rockets at the head of the Omnic. "Fuck, fuck, wrong button, fuck," he breathed, casting aside his gun and dropping to his knees in front of Gabe, barely giving notice to the disembodied human arm in the rubble. "Gabe?" 

He wasn't breathing, and shrapnel from the rockets and Omnic had sliced his cheek and temple open. Jack took off the man's beanie and pressed it against the wound, probing two fingers from his free hand against the man's neck. Nothing. "Oh no, oh god, fuck, no, no, no, no," his voice shook. Quickly, he unclipped Gabe's vest and unzipped his jacket to start compressions. The beanie rested against his head, the grey material darkening with blood. “C’mon, come back, come back," he whispered. Ten compressions. Twenty. Thirty. Jack swallowed and leaned down to tip Gabe's nose back. Nothing was blocking his airway, but he still wasn't breathing. 

Jack held the other man's jaw between his thumb and index finger as he forced two breaths through him. Still finding no pulse after checking, he continued with thirty more compressions. "Stay with me, Gabe," he urged. Three cycles left and still no pulse. Two. Tears welled up in Jack's eyes as he pushed down harder against Gabe's chest and heard something crack. "Oh fuck," Jack trembled, but kept going, alternating between thirty compressions and two breaths. He was on the last cycle and it had almost been two minutes since he had started. Jack's whole body quaked as tears dripped onto Gabe's chest and cheeks. "Stay with me, stay with me," Jack begged as if it was the one phrase keeping himself alive. After twenty-three compressions in, Gabe's pulse started up again. "Okay, we're getting somewhere, just keep holding on," he assuaged.

Finally he could stop compressions and just focus on getting Gabe to breathe on his own again. He tried to blow hard enough to make the man's chest rise and fall, but the broken ribs complicated things. Still, he persisted, eyes squeezed shut in focus as he pressed his lips to Gabe’s, and suddenly felt two hands weakly gripping his hair. 

Jack opened his eyes and pulled back, Gabe's hands dropping down as he did so. Blood rushed to Jack's cheeks and reminded him to grab the beanie and press it to the other's head as he wheezed out a few coughs. Quickly, Jack hopped onto comms to let Ana and the rest of the team know he had found Gabe.

"Jaaack?" Gabe groaned groggily as he gripped his ribs in pain. "Ow, ow, fuck," he whined.

"Oh thank god," Jack breathed. "Yes, it's me, Jack, I thought you w-"

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

"Oh, shit, the rockets." They must've made him lose his hearing, at least temporarily. He took Gabe's hand in his own and moved it up to apply pressure to the beanie. "KEEP THAT THERE, I'm gonna give you something for the pain." Jack let go of Gabe's hand after giving it a gentle squeeze and dug into his waist pouch for some dilaudid and gauze. "MOVE YOUR HAND.” Gabe complied despite barely being able to hear, movements slow as Jack tore open an alcohol prep pad. "This is gonna sting a bit," he warned before gently dabbing the pad against Gabe's cuts. 

"FUCK! FUCK OW that HURTS," Gabe cried out, hand struggling to pull Jack's away from his temple. "I know, I know," Jack weakly offered. Gabe sucked in air through his teeth and winced as his wound was disinfected. Once the area was mostly cleaned off, Jack unrolled the white meshy fabric. "Can you sit up a little?" He accompanied the question with an upwards beckon. Gabe grunted and lifted his neck up just enough for Jack to wrap the gauze around his head. "Everything hurts, Jack."

"I know I know, it's over, let me get some dilaudid in you." Jack rolled up Gabe's sleeve and tore open another prep pad to sanitize the crook of his elbow. In times like these, he wished they still had their picc lines from the SEP days. ”You’ll be feeling better soon," he assured, quietly as it was meant to comfort himself as he tossed the pad and pulled out a syringe. He pointed to Gabe's hand with his free one and clenched his fist. Gabe did the same, and Jack tapped gently at his skin to find a good vein. After finding one, he reminded Gabe, "This is gonna pinch for just a second, okay?" Jack inserted the needle into the vein and slowly pushed the dilaudid in, uncurling Gabe's fist with his other hand. Jack realized that he had been sitting on Gabe's lap for about five minutes and rolled off, blood rushing to his cheeks again. Gabe snorted and let out a little giggle. Jack guessed that meant the dilaudid was kicking in. 

"Where... where's Ana?" Gabe asked. "It's like... my legs're Jack, jelly. Shit, I mean... my jellies are... whatever." Jack suppressed a snort and clipped his gun to his back. He reached under Gabe’s armpits to lift him up into a firefighter's carry. Once Gabe was over his shoulder, Jack squat down to lift them both up. "Woah woah, _¿qué estás haciendo?_ " Gabe slurred.

“GETTING YOU OUT OF HERE," Jack shouted back, grateful he remembered some of his high school Spanish.

" _Cuidado_ , I don't need to fall and get a head injury."

"I am, I am. And you already have one," Jack muttered.

" _Vamanos_ ,"Gabe commanded. Jack rolled his eyes and started trudging towards the LZ, reaching up with his left hand to activate his comms. "This is Morrison, carrying Reyes, heading towards LZ, over."

Ana quickly shot back, "Jack? Oh, _alḥamdulillāh_. You have Gabriel? Is he...?"

"He's fine," Jack assured her as he continued walking. "Just a little high on dilaudid. And deaf. Temporarily, I think?"

"Copy that," she chuckled at the thought of Reyes being high. "I'm at the transport with the others. See you soon." 

"Jack..." Gabe started, "there was... there was a hand."

"What?"

He continued, not hearing Jack, "In the building... th-they put a human hand as bait in the rubble. A kid's hand. It was moving..."

"Christ." Jack briefly recalled the odd contraption in the rubble.

"It was a trap," Gabe managed, the dilaudid coupled with trauma making him choke up with emotion. "I've... I've never seen them do something like that. Never."

"Never seen them choke anyone, either," Jack muttered cooly.

" _Pienso que están.... cambiando_ ," Gabe whispered, his voice shaking a little.

"You think they're what?" Jack raised his voice a little so Gabe could hear better. 

"Changing, Jack, they're changing!" Gabe pat Jack's back emphatically on the last three syllables.

"The UN isn't gonna be happy about this." Jack muttered with a sigh after a few moments of silence. He nearly tripped over a couple of cinder blocks in his moment of introspection.

Finally, they reached the landing zone for their transport, where a team of paramedics was already waiting out front with a floating stretcher.

"All the blood's in my head," Gabe observed sleepily as Jack squat down to lower him onto the stretcher. 

"I already gave him some d-" Jack started. 

"We know," one of the paramedics interrupted.

"Oh, Ana told you?"

"No. We know." Jack guessed they weren't going to let on any more than that and let them pass. 

"Hey, wait-" he called after them. They stopped and the stretcher hovered in place with a hum. "Can I keep him company? It's a long flight and he's kind of... shaken." 

"You can't be in there when we're working on him, but you can visit when we're done."

After removing the shrapnel from his head and giving him a fresh new bandage, the medical team transferred Gabe to a bed in their small onboard clinic. They made sure to mute the monitors tracking his vitals so he could sleep while their ship rumbled through the sky. From a brief scan they could tell that Gabe had two broken ribs-which they taped up-, a concussion that would keep him off the field for at least a month, and lacerations in addition to temporary but severe hearing loss.

Jack tapped his foot anxiously as he sat forward in the chair next to Gabe's bed. Golden, dusty light streamed through the slim rectangular windows near the top of the walls, particles in the air floating gently around Gabriel like a halo. Jack scooted closer to the bed and took Gabe's hand in his own. He felt the other man gently squeeze his back in his sleep. He looked so peaceful, dark brows relaxed, lips subtly parted. More than anything right now Jack wanted to ruffle Gabe's messy curls and give him soft kisses as he woke. But he wasn't going to do that now when Gabe was asleep and unable to say yes or no. 

Jack had cared deeply for him for a while now; they had bonded over the side-effects of the soldier enhancement program, rubbing each other’s backs through chills and late nights retching in the bathroom. It was only now that he had taken time to figure out the thoughts and impulses in his mind when they were around each other. The most physical contact they had had was when Gabe learned his grandmother passed away, months after the fact—the SEP barred any communication with the outside world. Jack held him through choked sobs that ached with grief. It was a vulnerable moment for both of them, and Jack certainly wasn’t going to cash in on the death of his best friend’s grandmother by trying to make advances. 

He wanted to protect this man. Hell, maybe he even wanted to grow old with him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I love these three and will probably put more fics out about them in the future.
> 
> Translation notes:
> 
> Arabic:
> 
> Alḥamdulillāh = Praise be to God, thank God (depending on the context)  
> Mumkin = Maybe
> 
> Español:
> 
> ¿Qué estás haciendo? = What are you doing?  
> Cuidado = Careful  
> Vamanos = Let's go  
> Pienso que están.... cambiando = I think they're.... changing


End file.
